Amazing. The New Year had barely passed, and I was already having one of the best meals I could imagine anywhere. I first heard of Borago, when it was blogged by John Sconzo. Reflecting the New Naturalism philosophy of Mugaritz, noma, and In de Wulf – it was a delight to see it applied to a different set of ingredients, one I was completely unfamiliar with. I’ve heard a catchphrase used to describe these restaurants – Borago (Santiago), Gustu (La Paz), Astrid y Gaston (Lima), Central (Lima), among others – “New Andean“. [reports to come, later]. All ingredients from the restaurant are foraged within a 140km radius around it.

Borago is best enjoyed after traversing the length of Chile. I imagine travellers, fresh from 10 days in the Patagonian rainforest, or driving down the coast of Chile, or just flown in from San Pedro de Atacama in the Atacama desert, would find delightful reprises of their journeys in each of the dishes conjured up by Borago. For example, a soup made of Patagonian rainwater was served in a bed of moss. A macaron made with plants from the Atacama desert was made to look like that dry, desolate landscape. The plating was inventive, and absolutely delightful. The tastes were precise, and towards the end there was a sustained sequence of excellent and memorable dishes which rivalled anything I have experienced.

I ordered the 16 course extended Raqko tasting menu. Borago offers an 8 course option (Endemica) and 16 course option (Raqko). Rodolfo Guzman helmed the kitchen that night of 2nd January, ably assisted by Peruvian sous Tommy de Olarte and Mexican sous Sergio Meza, who has had experience at In de Wulf and noma. He:

has spent time working at noma and In de Wulf amongst other noteworthy restaurants before coming to work at Boragó. Cooking since he was just 14 years old and now still only 22, his is a name to watch. – Docsconz.

A beautiful meal, there is no better send-off to Chile than dining at Borago. Indulge on your last night before you fly back home.

My eating tour at a few of the Top 50 Latin American restaurants had gotten off to a rocky start with a amateurish meal at Tegui in Argentina. But Borago (the second fine-dining spot I had visited after 2 weeks in South America) restored some faith in that list by the end of the meal.

Geography: Borago is located in the upscale neighbourhood of Vitacura. You can use Uber to get to the restaurant, since Uber has just launched in Santiago.

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An Aside on Economics: Chile’s economy is undergoing a boom right now. But there are storm clouds ahead. Chile mines over 1/3 of the world’s copper ore, and copper accounts for 13.5% (2011) of Chile’s GDP. Codelco (Chile’s national copper company) sells copper ore straight from the Antofagasta region to China, which refines it and ships it back to Chile. [This reminds me in principle of the exported expertise-building that took place in Singapore when Malaysia exported water from the Johor region from 1961-2011, only to have it purified and shipped back for a higher price]. There is a worry that Chinese demand is going to taper off. There are three plausible reasons I have heard:

General rebalancing towards Chinese consumers due to unsustainability of investment-led growth model. The steady-state analysis by Michael Pettis in his book is very persuasive. He makes what he calls his “second assumption” on timing that Chinese demand will taper off very soon, where China will soon hit debt capacity limits, where loans for investment cannot be repaid out of taxes (implicit in artificially low savings rates, suppressed exchange rate).

The time of fundamental infrastructure investment in Chinese cities is over. Copper is mainly needed for high-voltage power-lines. I consider this a non-factor, since according to Tom Miller’s book on Chinese urbanisation, there is still about 300 million of Chinese rural-urban migration yet to occur.

Substitution by carbon-nanotubes for fundamental infrastructure. Copper may be needed for high-voltage power-lines, but China is looking towards carbon nanotubes for fundamental power infrastructure, being cheaper. I consider this an on-the-fence factor, because much depends on how successful Chinese research into carbon nanotubes will be.

In addition, there is a worry about how the tapering of QE in the US will start bringing hot-money investors seeking higher returns back to the US and away from the rest of the world.

What this means for a Chilean high-end restaurant, is that there is a question mark over the domestic economy and domestic consumers. High-end restaurants are like desert flowers that bloom when prosperity rains upon the local region. A restaurant like Borago represents Chilean prosperity. If the rains of prosperity cease after a short time, then restaurants must subsist upon the tourism aquifer, or shrivel, wither, die. Gastronomic tourism is especially important in a high-income-inequality region such as Latin America, which has a smaller domestic base of gastronome consumers. In any case, I noticed that most of the diners in Borago the night I was in (2nd January), were tourists (mainly American).

Aside 2: Besides talking about the nature of demand for Chilean fine dining above (domestic and foreign), the foreign demand for global fine-dining is in fact, composed of a very distinct set of “foodie” people. There promises to be a good documentary on foodies released this year. I hope the directors devote some significant time to how foodies interact with each other. That’s the most fascinating part.

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The passage of 4.5 hours…

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Statement of intent

Initial photos on the pass

Mawun Rainwater – collected from a lagoon in Patagonia

Snacks

Pork Skin

Flatbread

“Cuchufli”

Normally a Chilean candy filled with dulce de leche, this replaced it with chicken pate.

A yellow pepper salsa (“pobre?”) with ash of coriander, onion, tomato on top

Locos, a false abalone (actually a sea snail), is usually served with olive oil and mayonnaise (how I had it earlier that day at Aquí Esta Coco)

Here the idea, explained to me by Meza, was to avoid masking the taste by adding a lot of mayonnaise, but to pair it with citrus. Lemon balm leaves, bits of lime peel, blitzed 12 times and reduced to paste dabs, sprinkled with parsley and a sweet hunk of citrusy paste in the middle made of an endemic herb.

Pleasant, though I felt the locos here had a bit less sweetness than the ones at lunch.

Purslane, cooked like a meat straight on the grill. Yoghurt with kefir.

While I enjoy the direct grilling technique applied to beets and carrots, I didn’t think that this purslane had enough sugar or chemicals to react deliciously with the heat. It was still a bit tasteless when it came out.

4th. Cremoso de Isla Negra (4.5/5)

The beginning of a sustained sequence of courses I really enjoyed all the way until the end. The first three courses were duds to me (the only reason why Borago doesn’t get a perfect score), but from here all the way to the end the quality was unflagging.

An egg yolk from the Mapuche hen was cured in sugar, taking all the water out until it became a sweet gummy, was plated deceivingly with what looked like cooked egg white but was actually elephant-garlic-and-potato puree. Plating masterpiece.

Afterwards I had to spend a good minute getting the gummy egg yolk bits out of my teeth.

A cooked down stew (“chupe”) of pine mushrooms and bolete mushrooms foraged 120km away in Quintay was garnished with mushroom crisps and crispy mushroom strands. Next to it was pine powder. Evocative of a forest floor. Tasted marvellously of pine-woodiness.

Agua de Lluvia de la Patagonia (7)

7th. Curanto y Agua de Lluvia de la Patagonia (5/5)

Here’s a humorous Wikihow link on how to make Curanto. Essentially, a mud-wall underground barbecuing technique. Concentrated with intense flavors of the component parts, this was a dish I will remember for a long time.

At Boragó, the flavors of the curanto were distilled into a broth, rich with the flavor of clams and pork, which was served in a cup surrounded by moss and twigs among which was tucked a nugget of fried potato. It was delicious. – Ulterior Epicure

Curanto is a traditional preparation from the south of Chile and involves burying layers of food including shellfish, meat, chorizo, potatoes, vegetables and other ingredients cooked under ground on a layer of hot rocks and covered with nalca leaves to keep the smoke inside. This is usually done during a minga, a traditional party held when houses are literally moved from one location to another. At Boragó they used Patagonian rain water to create a stock incorporating all the flavors of the curanto serving a traditional potato bread or milcao on the side nestled amongst the branches. – Docsconz

He coated conger eel in ash and perched it on the banks of a lake of machas broth, blushing with the peachy-pink color that the machas clam (mistakenly called “razor clam” by locals; it’s triangular in shape) secretes when cooked. This dish, like many other dishes, including an inky dashi made out of ulte seaweed, was rich with the xian of the ocean. It was one of my favorite dishes at Boragó. – Ulterior Epicure

An ashen tempura of conger eel, in bullwhip kelp root dashi. Conger eel had a soft, cod-like texture. Very good.

Jugo de Pimentón Rojo (9)

Tipaume, Ensamblaje, 2011, D.O. Alto Cachapoal (10)

10th. Temera y su Leche (5/5)

Brilliant dish. 40-hour beef cooked in milk (to evoke the smell of what it produces), served with alfalfa leaves (to evoke the scent of what it eats), a burnt branch (to evoke the smell of the meadow). Milk crisps further enhanced the milk scents. The entire lifecycle of a cow.

11th. Pieza de Vaca y Espino (4.75/5)

Guzman used wood or products from four different trees in this dish. The seeds in the photo above were edible as they were and also used for the complex, mole-like glaze on the beef. These were from the Espino tree (Acacia Caven), which according to Wikipediais just an ornamental tree. According to Rodolfo Guzman, however, the Mapuche have been toasting and eating Espino seeds for over 2000 years. The toasting gives the seeds an aroma like coffee. The Mapuche call these tannin-laden seed pods Quirinca. The beef was cooked over both Espino wood as well as wood from the Tepu tree of southern Chile. Additional elements in this dish came from the Quillay tree and the Ulmo tree. This dish made no sense intuitively, but somehow Guzman pulled it off and made the wood enhanced beef work. Sure, wood has been a flavor enhancer via smoke for as long as humans have used fire, but I had never before actually eaten woody elements as I had here. The only thing on the plate that wasn’t actually edible was the branch itself. I’m still not sure that I understand this dish or how Chef Guzman did it, but I’m glad I had it! It was a very complex dish that really grew on me as I ate it. It will likely continue to haunt me for some time. – Docsconz

A good dish, reminiscent of the coffee spareribs ubiquitous in Singapore czechar places (the difference being that Singaporean ribs are fried, and here the shortrib was, I believe, sous-vide-d). Sweetly and slightly bitter glaze on shortribs. Good.

Quirinca seed pod.

Jugo de Murra (11)

Blackberry juice. A note here on the philosophy of the sommelier at Borago. Most of the drinks I had were orthogonal to the dish, adding a completely new dimension to the dish, without competing or diminishing the flavors. It was very enjoyable to drink the pairings.

Ramping up to dessert.

Licor de Rica-Rica (12)

A mothball smelling, mild tasting sap.

12th. Rica Rica de Atacama (5/5)

Ice cream from the rica rica plant, and a macaron layer made of rica rica. The filling was made from the Chañar wildflower. Evoked the Atacama desert.

I had just spent 4 days in the Atacama desert, in landscapes that looked like this:

So this dish immediately hit home in visual associations.

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Chicha Premium, D.O. Cachapoal (13)

13th. Oveja Chilota “Chilota Sheep” (5/5)

A cake covered with fermeneted maqui berry juice, an endemic berry tasting similar to black berry, was covered with a blonde sugar floss and a sheephead-shaped marshmallow. Taste and visual presentation, superb. [The “sheep” is a plating also used at El Celler de Can Roca.]

Someone has to kill the sheep.

Infusión de Cedrón (14)

14th. Chirimoya contenta y zanahoria (4.75/5)

I could not guess the identity of the leathery, sweet thing on the branch. Persimmon? It turned out to be carrot, cooked for a very long time. Carrots have been a revelation in recent years – so many cooks have taken the humble carrot. There are so many possibilities within this humble vegetable.

A haute-version of Chirimoya Alegre. Chirimoya is custard apple, and here was paired beautifully with citrus and carrot, in puree, sorbet and crisp form.

Cerveza Barrio, Barley Wine (15)

15th. Coulant de Espino (4.5/5)

A tribute to Michel Bras’s coulant. Warm inside, cold and quite hard outside. I had to take five strong taps to crack my coulant.